


NZT and After

by melissima



Category: Limitless (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-18
Updated: 2016-12-18
Packaged: 2018-09-09 10:15:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8887030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/melissima/pseuds/melissima
Summary: or, "I swear I didn't do anything illegal! I don't even like show tunes. Jeez, Darryl."





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hilandmum](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hilandmum/gifts).



It's six p.m.on a Wednesday, and they knock off for the night, finished with the paperwork for the latest case. He flops down on the couch in his new place (thank you, fat paycheck!) and lays there for about sixteen seconds before he has to get up and find something to do until his pill wears off.

It feels great to be back at the CJC, it really does. The problem is trying to keep himself busy and out of trouble when he's not working. Last night he built a couple of drones out of the motors from a dancing Santa he found in his parents' garage, half a reel of leftover speaker wire and a package of cheap plastic cutting boards for propellers. They're fantastic! He's waiting for the box of USB cameras to show up -- they'll be like junky little homing pigeons, without the bird crap.

The night before that? He taught himself basic parkour to write swear words in white gravel on the roofs of a bunch of the buildings in his neighborhood. Read everything that had ever been published about Disneyland, and figured out how to program the animatronic Hamilton from the Hall of Presidents to sing show tunes. Brian 2 loves the idea, and points out that Piper likes Broadway.

It's finally sinking in that the enormous zip-lock bag of NZT hidden in his underwear drawer isn't going to kill him. He wanders over to the drawer and stares at it. Brian 2, complete with mouse ears, suggests that he can take another pill, go to Disneyland, reprogram the robot, and be home before breakfast. he could look for Piper.

It's not like before. She's safe, unseen since she slipped out of his warm, saggy teenage-era bed and asked him to go back to sleep. She'd said Please. It nags at him that he could find her if he wanted to. Of course he wants to find her. But she asked him to let her go. 

\- o -

Friday night he books a flight to California with his robot plans in his carry-on. It sucks that he can't hang around to watch the fallout without risking jail, but he can take an extra two minutes to mount one of the drone cameras in old Alexander's cravat so he'll be able to see people's faces on his phone. He's packing up his laptop when he realizes that nobody could connect him to Piper if he looks for her from across the country and from someone else's computer. He tucks an extra NZT pill into the half-full aspirin bottle in his carry-on.

Hacking the robot is a piece of cake next to locating an internet-connected computer in the park after hours. Two picked locks, a deodorant-covered security camera, and guessing a cat's-birthday-turned-password later, he settles in to look for traces of Piper under a brand new handle and an alias credit card. He tells Brian 2 to work up a report for Nas on what Disney has to teach the CJC about security. At least the network is fast. He sets up an automated program to scan for keywords every night, search for them on the web and dump the results to email. By the time he's watching the mob of Disneyphiles singing and dancing live with the fake president, the first set of leads has already arrived. He forgets to sleep.

\- o -

He and Brian 2 build a combination home-theater-flight-simulator-console-gaming-cockpit in the early hours of Monday morning, after spending most of Sunday sleeping off NZT like a coke binge. It's no fun playing against him, though, they have all the same moves. When the latest Piper leads come in, the pieces slot into their places like so many Tetris blocks and just like that, he knows where she is. Moments later he's got the alias she's using now and from there her email is trivial.

His finger hovers over the send button on yet another clean email address for what feels like eons, remembering her eyes as she whispered "Please", instead of "Goodbye."

Darryl and Jason swing by to pick him up, so he slams his laptop shut before they can wonder what he's up to.

Tuesday, they catch a child trafficking case, and he spends the rest of the week up to his eyeballs in the revolting sludge of humanity, trying his best to get eight little girls back to their parents. They save six, and Rebecca spends the night on his couch after they finish a bottle of vodka over video games. She kicks his ass.

\- o -

When the hangover's worn off, he realizes the team has a couple days off -- the shrinks can only clear so many of them per day. He starts to get pissed off, rattling around with nothing else to focus on. Piper knows he can use NZT safely now, so she must know he's half an hour's effort away from joining her, incognito. He's more tempted than ever to show up at her cracker-box bungalow in the suburbs just to ask her if she thinks he's oblivious. Piper 2 suggests maybe she just wanted to get rid of him -- maybe he's just an annoying puppy dog hanging around, waiting for a Milkbone? He tells Piper 2 to fuck off. Rebecca 2 tries to tell him it's okay to cry, so he tells her to fuck off, too.

Video games and TV don't cut it, and he smoked his stash after Rebecca fell asleep. He digs out his guitar. 

By the time he goes back to work, he's got a metal album cooling on his hard drive. He sends the songs to Eli, half-heartedly thinking about resurrecting Resorbed Twin, but he can't picture giving up helping people just to be a rock star.

\- o -

By his third month back at work, his dad starts making noises about how people date on computers now, and how Brian's on his computer all the time these days anyway. He makes a show of asking what he should say in a profile, but he never clicks the button to save it. As soon as his Dad hugs him goodbye, he trashes it.

Guilt rides him, unbearable every time his parents drop hints about it, teasing him when he checks his email at the table. He digs around in his investment portfolio and finds something he can liquidate, hires an actress to play a contest administrator and give his parents the whale-spotting cruise to Alaska they've been saving up for. When they get home a few weeks later, they've forgotten all about his dating profile.

\- o -

His stock portfolio takes an even more profitable turn, and Rebecca 2 reminds him that they actually kidnapped Sands' kid, who is now fatherless. He sets up a trust for the kid as if Sands had, and isn't even surprised when Sands 2 shows up to help him track down the right set of investments for it. 

It feels good to do it, he's proud. But that doesn't mean he wants anyone to know. He scrubs any connection to Sands or the trust from his computer, and considers dumping the whole portfolio, starting over. In the end he decides he might need the assets, if Piper finally decides to let him in. He has no evidence she will, but the thought cheers him anyway. He keeps the rest of the portfolio and adds bits to it now and then, separate from the finances he keeps in the open.

\- o -

It's a random Tuesday, between 2 and 3 am. He's asleep, finally, after having worn himself out playing guitar and testing six different propeller shapes on his drone. Piper's voice in his ear confuses him, but his arm reaches for her even as Rebecca 2 chides him about sleep-deprived hallucinations.

Piper's breathless, her eager hands tearing at his pajamas, but he's too stunned and happy to make love right away. He runs his hands over her thin T-shirt, scratches his gnawed-down nails along her jeans. A little later he'll need to see her, hear the hitch in her breath at the moment she shakes out of control. But first he needs to cling, to squeeze, convince his overclocked brain it isn't fooling itself. She's really there, really real. 

It takes about ten and a half months and three surprise visits before he can catch himself anticipating the next one and revel in it, conjuring up the scent of her coconut shampoo and the way the hallway light picks up the pearly polish on her toenails when she steps out of her boots, otherwise still dressed, her feet moon-white against his dark carpet. 

He always resolves to be still the next time he realizes she's there, pretend to be asleep -- but thoughtlessly he pops out of bed, happy as a puppy. "You're here, you're really here," he singsongs, knowing he'll be embarrassed about it later. He can't hold still, dances her around the apartment before he drags her between the sheets. 

When he realizes it's daylight and not the street lamp sending stripes through the blinds, he wraps himself around her and clings. "Take me with you," he breathes, terrified. "Please."

She kisses him, kisses his hands when she peels them from her skin, kisses the tears that leak from his eyes. "You're not scared because I'm leaving, you're scared because you think I won't come back." Her gaze spears him there. He can feel that she's leaving, like tearing his skin wide open. "I'm coming back, Brian. You can count on it."

\- o -

He jerks awake a couple of hours later, dresses for work feeling raw. Darryl and Jason dig at him for a while, trying to get him to admit he hacked the hall of Presidents over Youtube videos and grinders from the Deli on the corner. He's underslept, angry, but Piper 2 shows up and runs her fingers through his hair at the back of his neck. He can't stay grumpy when she does that.

"Let's get back to work, guys," he says, startling them both speechless.

Piper 2 smiles softly at him and says, "My hero!"

**Author's Note:**

> So sorry to everyone for my brain fade. Of course it's NZT! Fixed now.
> 
> Thanks to Yuletide admins for the wonderful exchange that makes my holiday every year.
> 
> Also thanks to hilandmum for an intriguing prompt! 
> 
> Enjoy the read, and I wish you the happiest of holidays, everyone.


End file.
